Arsenal Oligarch Usmanov Looks For Yandex Investment

Arsenal football club majority owner Alisher Usmanov is reportedly trying to add to his online investments by buying between 10 and 20 percent of Russia’s top portal Yandex. Business paper Vedomosti (via Quintura) reports one existing shareholder as saying Usmanov wants to take control of the site by buying both a share from the founders and in the site’s upcoming Nasdaq IPO, which is estimated at $5 billion.

Not content with being Arsenal’s biggest shareholder with a 24.9 percent stake (and hoping to control it outright), mining baron Usmanov has also set his sights on Russia’s booming internet market – dubbed Runet – in the last year, also buying chunks of Mail.ru owner Digital Sky Technologies and LiveJournal operator Sup.